“Steve, I was reading your article about this new Outlook.com. My Hotmail account was upgraded to it so I went in to try it out. I don’t know if it’s that program or my browser, but each time I try to insert, say, a picture whether in line or an attachment, I get this God blessed box every time that that says Internet Explorer encountered an error and needs to close. Is it on my end or who’s? This is driving me nutso… thanks so much.”

Hi, Charlene. Thanks for the great question.

When I looked into this issue, I discovered that you are not alone. This is apparently a conflict between newer versions of Outlook being used with older versions of IE. In other words, this is another of the notorious KNOWN ISSUES with Microsoft.

You didn’t provide any of your version information, but I bet you a Coke that you’re running Internet Explorer 6 or earlier with with Server 2003. If you are, look here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889100[1] for a download to resolve your problem. If you have a different version of IE or are not running 2003, then I’d just check to make sure that all of your programs are up-to-date. That should resolve the problem.

You should also go in to check and make sure that your auto-update feature is turned on. You do this by clicking your START button, and then, in the search box enter UPDATE. Do not hit enter, the computer should start populating choices immediately. One of these will be WINDOWS UPDATE. Click on that.

That’ll open your windows update screen from your control panel. On the left sidewalk, you’ll see CHANGE SETTINGS.

On the next screen, click the pull-down menu under IMPORTANT UPDATES and choose INSTALL UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY.

Under that pull-down menu, you’ll find selections to determine the frequency of your auto-updates.